Category Archives: Humanitarian

Thank you to our Soldiers, this ANZAC Day, 25th April 2013

Thank you to our soldiers, on this Anzac Day, 25th April 2013.

Thank you for risking your lives in far off lands. 

Had you not done that, generations ago, I, and thousands of genuine migrant refugee children, would not be calling this beautiful country of Australia their home. You helped defeat the enemies of freedom, and oppression. Enemies, that were racist, dogmatic, totalitarian, dictatorial, and against everything that freedom of choice stood for!

Politicians may have been the reason you brave souls went to war, but it was your heroism, your sacrifices, your endurance of hardships, and horrors, that the people of today, cannot begin, even in their wildest, terror filled nightmares, to comprehend, that made it all work. 

For as long as I live, I will be thankful to the Service men and women, who died, who were maimed, who suffered mentally, for their sacrifices, in far off lands, to protect our own shores.

LEST WE FORGET

The Worth of a Soldier!

Below my own words, I have copied a missive, whose words, are only too true, and which I received today, from a friend.

It makes me ashamed of the quality of politicians we have today, in this country. It makes me ashamed of politicians whose major concern is, to follow their own personal short term agenda’s instead of focussing on what really matters.

It makes me ashamed that we have people like Kevin Rudd, who undermined Australia’s Prime Minister’s leadership as soon as his own party outed him. It makes me ashamed that the leader of the opposition, is a clown like Tony Abbott, who changes his position on issues according to who asks him the question.

It makes me ashamed, that people like this, can send our soldiers to die, to be maimed, to be traumatised, in far off lands.

Soldiers do not start wars!

Politicians start wars!

If we want the wars, and the needless waste of life, that wars create, the people must let the politician’s know, that wars are unacceptable.

One term politicians can send people to die in foreign lands. One term politicians, having served their three or four years, forget all about their decisions, once they retire on pensions that are obscene in amount. And they give no thought to the soldiers they sent to die.

But for soldiers who have died, the effects on their families are forever. For a life time. And for those soldiers who are lucky enough to return to their families, return scarred and damaged, for the violence of war, is not a video game. It is a real terror.

When ANZAC DAY comes, my friends, the servicemen and woman who have fought for this country, must be remembered with reverence.

But every other day of the year, when we see a serviceman or woman, we should give them, at the very least, a smile. Because, for putting their lives on the line, that is about the best reward they can expect.

I will repeat my words again, closer to our official day of Remembrance.
————————————————————————————————
Missive from a friend;

A Poem Worth Reading
He was getting old and paunchy
And his hair was falling fast,
And he sat around the RSL,
Telling stories of the past.

Of a war that he once fought in
And the deeds that he had done,
In his exploits with his mates;
They were heroes, every one.

And ‘tho sometimes to his neighbors
His tales became a joke,
All his mates listened quietly
For they knew where of he spoke.

But we’ll hear his tales no longer,
For ol’ Bob has passed away,
And the world’s a little poorer
For a Soldier died today.

He won’t be mourned by many,
Just his children and his wife..
For he lived an ordinary,
Very quiet sort of life.
He held a job and raised a family,
Going quietly on his way;
And the world won’t note his passing,
‘Tho a Soldier died today.

When politicians leave this earth,
Their bodies lie in state,
While thousands note their passing,
And proclaim that they were great.
Papers tell of their life stories
From the time that they were young
But the passing of a Soldier
Goes unnoticed, and unsung.

Is the greatest contribution
To the welfare of our land,
Some jerk who breaks his promise
And cons his fellow man?

Or the ordinary fellow
Who in times of war and strife,
Goes off to serve his country
And offers up his life?

The politician’s stipend
And the style in which he lives,
Are often disproportionate,
To the service that he gives.

While the ordinary Soldier,
Who offered up his all,
Is paid off with a medal
And perhaps a pension, small.
It’s so easy to forget them,
For it is so many times
That our Bobs and Jims and Johnnys,
Went to battle in foreign climes.

It is not the politicians
With their compromise and ploys,
Who won for us the freedom
That our country now enjoys.
Should you find yourself in danger,
With your enemies at hand,
Would you really want some cop-out,
With his ever waffling stand?

Or would you want a Soldier–
His home, his country, his kin,
Just a common Soldier,
Who would fight until the end.

He was just a common Soldier,
And his ranks are growing thin,
But his presence should remind us
We may need his like again.
For when countries are in conflict,
We find the Soldier’s part
Is to clean up all the troubles
That the politicians start.

If we cannot do him honor
While he’s here to hear the praise,
Then at least let’s give him homage
At the ending of his days..

Perhaps just a simple headline
In the paper that might say:

OUR COUNTRY IS IN MOURNING, 
A SOLDIER DIED TODAY.

A veteran is someone who, at one point in his life,
wrote a blank cheque made payable to ‘Australia’, ‘New Zealand’, or any other God fearing country for an amount “up to and including my life”.

That is Honour, and there are way too many people in this WORLD who no longer understand it.

Lest we Forget 

I would rather die, than go into a nursing home!

No matter how good they are, once you enter one, as an inmate, you know you will never leave.

Let’s face it. One enters a nursing home, because for, one reason or another, one is unable to look after oneself, in one’s own home, or one has become too much of a burden for family or friends to look after. 

And that is not necessarily because of selfishness on their part. Looking after someone, who cannot look after themselves, is an extremely exhausting condition, that has no let up. 

And I would rather be euthanased, or walk in front of a truck, than go into a nursing home, when, or if, my time ever came. And I would never want the truck option, because the effect it would have on the driver.

So that leaves just one option. Legalise euthanasia!
————————————————————————

Rational suicide: Why Beverley Broadbent chose to die

Date
April 2, 2013
 ‘Why I chose to die’

Beverley Broadbent was not depressed or suffering from a terminal illness when she took her life.

After living a rich and satisfying life, the Brighton East woman said the ageing process had come to feel like a disease that was robbing her of her physical and mental fitness. In February, she said she had had enough.

”I look well and I walk well so people think I’m fine. But I have so many things wrong with me,” she said. ”The balance is gone. It’s taking so much time for me to keep fit to enjoy myself that there’s not enough time to enjoy myself.”

In several interviews with Fairfax Media, Ms Broadbent said she planned to take her own life so she could have a peaceful, dignified death. She said she did not want her health to deteriorate to the point where she had dementia or found herself in a nursing home with no way out.

Beverley Broadbent, 83, believes elderly people should be able to decide when they want to die.Beverley Broadbent at home with her dog Lucy. Photo: Angela Wylie

The environmental activist chose to tell her story because she believed many elderly people wanted to die when they felt their life was complete, but lacked the means to go gently.

”I can’t understand why people who really want to can’t have the means to go with the help of a doctor in a dignified manner at the time that they choose,” she said.

”They are not asking anybody else to do it, they don’t want to pressure anyone else to do it, they just want to have the right to do what I’m doing. I hope people can

see how sensible it is and that I’m not stupid, I’m not depressed, I’m not sad. I’m having a good life that I’m enjoying right to the last minute.”

Ms Broadbent said she had acquired some barbiturates – the drugs euthanasia advocates call the ”peaceful pill” – and planned to take them when the time was right.

She died at home in her bed on February 11.

When she explained her choice, Ms Broadbent said her fear of deteriorating to the point where she would be unable to end her life made her want to go sooner rather than later. She said if physician-assisted suicide was legal, she might have pushed on knowing she could end her life at any time.

”I can’t wait, I can’t take the risk,” she said.

Her story comes as the Coroners Court of Victoria launches an investigation into suicide to establish how common it is and what factors are driving it. In recent years, the court has seen an increasing number of cases in which people have made apparently rational decisions to end their lives because they were suffering a chronic or terminal illness.

Euthanasia campaigner Rodney Syme, who met Ms Broadbent several times before her death, said he believed she had not been depressed and had made a choice that many other elderly people would like to emulate.

He said an increasing number of older people were contacting him on the issue. Many wanted to avoid nursing homes.

Although polls show about 80 per cent of Australians support voluntary euthanasia for people with a terminal illness, Dr Syme said the question of elderly people being given the right to die had not been publicly debated in Australia.

This was despite the fact that many elderly people were severely disabled and experiencing great suffering on a par with that caused by cancer or other painful diseases, he said.

”Unfortunately, often people in Bev’s situation who do try to talk about these things are patronised by their family, who say: ‘Don’t talk like that gran, no, no, no, you’re all right.’ They are put down and patronised, no one gives them a voice,” he said.

”I think it’s an issue for which a lot of people probably have very quiet and hidden opinions. It’s an issue which is going to assume greater and greater importance and it’s about time the community started to debate it in a logical way.”

But Dr Katrina Haller, senior executive officer of Right to Life Australia, said Ms Broadbent’s story exacerbated her concern that elderly people were increasingly being viewed as a burden when they should be valued, supported and not ”dumped in old people’s homes”.

She said increasing discussion about elderly people taking up too many hospital beds, for example, could be encouraging suicide when the community was spending a large amount of money trying to prevent people taking their own lives.

”Elderly people can be coerced into feeling they are a burden on their family and their friends and the medical staff at hospital – and hospitals have other agendas, don’t they? They want to free up beds and minimise the money spent on people,” she said.

Dr Haller said that although Ms Broadbent’s story was an emotional one and might be hard to argue with, it did not amount to a case for legalising physician-assisted suicide, which would create a culture of death and turn doctors into killers.

She said legislating a right for elderly people to die would inevitably start a debate about others, including people with dementia and children with disabilities.

”Where do you draw the line? … In Belgium and the Netherlands [where euthanasia is legal for some people] the door gets opened a bit wider as years go by,” she said.

Read more: http://www.theage.com.au/victoria/rational-suicide-why-beverley-broadbent-chose-to-die-20130401-2h348.html#ixzz2PEBQlLJV